poetryxpolitics – dear ophelia

poetryxpolitics is priyanka’s experiment to explore the idea that everything as it exists is political, combining it with her personal philosophy that everything as it exists is poetry. the column will appear in each issue of Warehouse Zine’s subzine, Open Space.

about seven months ago, in a three-day frenzy fuelled by caffeine and other substances, I wrote a furious letter to the patriarchy, repurposed it as my thesis, and successfully defended ophelia of shakespeare’s hamlet from the male gaze of literary critics of the past. in many ways, I was reminded of another character from shakespearean canon; a certain lawyer who used her wit and wisdom to win an impossible case. as I write these words today, I am once more caught in the vortex of a three-day frenzy fuelled by caffeine and other substances, repurposing my repurposed thesis in the form I hold most dear – poetry.

with this poem, I attempt to re-purpose her character like the movement of feminism does unto itself in wave after wave, in time and in space. I attempt to bring together the theory and practice of feminism; combustible matter that reproduces itself even as it is destroyed, unlike the discourse of womanhood, both absent and understood as absence. I refurbish the character understood as so shallow that she must be killed to prove a point – in a tragedy whose hero is most certainly painted as voluminous in his volatility – and I do it to remind myself that I am like so many powerful women of depth and substance before me, fuelled by caffeine and the anger of those who had to die so we could live.

dear ophelia, you were as much a person as I am recognising myself to be.

dear ophelia

melancholy is a womanI once met in a gardensomewhere, she waslying in a shallow poolof water; I asked her ifshe was alright and shetold me her existencewas a protest againstthe fact that her emotionscame fragranced with theperfume of flowers anda canon of literary death,one-dimensional anddecorated with medalsof madness. melancholysaid a man she metlast week stole herwords from her mouth,swallowed them wholeand then reproducedthem as his own. later,he texted her thatit was her fault that hestole her words, sheshould know better thanto walk around with heropinions in her purseafter five pm, and also,has she consideredgetting tested for hysteria.“it’s just a suggestion,why do you womenalways get so offendedby everything?” melancholywants to be known asserious, contemplativelike the photographs ofHemingway she saw once,but when she took a sipof whisky the day aftershe wrote about dealingwith suicidal tendencieson facebook, they calledher “loud and annoying”,instead of “genius”. weird.she got three messagesin her “other” folder today,and two of them askedher why she was such anattention-seeking whore,and the third said “hi deer,wanna fuck?” and whenshe said “no, thanks.”, heasked her to get herselfto a nunnery. weird.

have you noticed how
if melancholy was a man,
she would be called
“gravitas”, as though her
actions carried certain weight
unlike the frail, fluttery, wisp-
like appearance they
offer her in story after
story, film after film;
have you noticed how
all of the women you’ve
ever met have been
taught melancholia –
it’s a chapter in a textbook
of the same system which
has a daily gender role-call.
we are taught how to make
an aesthetic out of our
very real sadness and
“aesthetic” is a poor
substitute for what it
really is – archetypal,
stereotypical, canonical
“woman”hood, always
absorbing the shame of
a hero in exchange for
dialogues. weird. I don’t
remember the last time
my sadness wasn’t killed
off in an encounter with
an unfulfilled man; my
anger labelled “too
aggressive”, my passion
“un-ladylike”, my sadness
“a ploy for attention”. weird.
I don’t remember the
last time a woman’s
sadness wasn’t used
to fill in the plot of an
unfulfilled man, I don’t
remember the last time
a woman was not written
off and out of the plot
to fulfill a man, I don’t
remember the last time
I wasn’t lying in a shallow
pool of water; my existence
a protest against the fact
that my emotions have
always been likened to
a magic trick, vanished
(banished?) from sight
when the man needs a
little reinforcement.